1. Background

“The world on September 11, 1901, was not a bad place for a healthy white man with a decent education and some money in the bank when the class to which he belonged had enjoyed ‘at a low cost and with the least trouble, conveniences, comforts, and amenities beyond the compass of the richest and most powerful monarchs of other ages’”, writes Niall Ferguson.1, p.3 What was most important, added Ferguson1, p. 4, was that this White man of 1901 saw “this state of affairs as normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement, and any deviation from it as aberrant, scandalous, and avoidable”.

This world of 1901 was the oyster of the White man, but for the critical observer, like the economist John Maynard Keynes, it was not without toxic impurities that could devour the White man and the false and superficial utopia over time. Indeed, two cruel and devastating World Wars, various other regional wars, two world-wide financial depressions, internationally ethnic and racial reprisals by the suppressed non-Whites, worldwide radical regime changes and many other calamities ensued from 1901 to 1950. This unexpectedly, unasked and unavoidably changed the White man’s belief in his unshakable “permanent and normal privileged lifestyle,” concludes Ferguson.1, p. 4

For nationalist Afrikaners, especially those living between 1948 and the late 1980s, South Africa was not a bad place to live in either; an oyster of Apartheid-privileged lifestyle that Afrikaners undoubtedly believed was normal and permanent and that could only be improved with time. However, the post-1994 democratic dispensation arrived virtually overnight: unexpected, unasked, unwelcome and unthinkable, and most of all, unavoidable for Afrikaners if they wanted a future existence in South Africa and on the African continent. This socio-economical, political and humanitarian correction of the economical, psychological, political and social wrongs created by the nationalist Afrikaners with their racial discrimination against non-Whites, brought tremendous aberrant and unforeseen negative changes to their good lifestyles, psychological functioning, religious, social-economical and political powers, individual and human rights, even citizen privileges. It also terminated the nationalist Afrikaner’s self-belief with one stroke of the pen. This self-belief was inculcated in Afrikaners since 1652 and it held that the Afrikaners have an “inherited ability” as Europeans to rule forever the indigenous peoples of South Africa.1,2,3

The favourable socio-economical political set-up described above was statutorily erased in 1994 as the political tide turned on the Afrikaner. As the fortune of Ferguson’s (2007) White man of 1901 changed dramatically during the first 50 years of the century, so did the Afrikaner’s fortune change dramatically, but in just 23 years. The Afrikaner is now inextricably linked to the birth pains of political, economical, social and personal modernization in the new South Africa. The Afrikaner brought this on himself during the 1970s without realising the consequences. The future life of the Afrikaner seems to be a totally different one from the one that he and his ancestors experienced or envisioned. When 1994 arrived, the Afrikaner was not only isolated from his fellow South Africans, there was no one left in the world to help him with this fate. 1, 4-10

In light of the above historical overview, the general question is thus prominent: Who is the Afrikaner?
Answering this question has become unavoidable. In 2017 this question needs immediate attention to ensure the Afrikaner’s present-day and future psychological, political, social, financial, emotional and physical well-being.

The lack of an in-depth self-investigation and analysis of who he is has undoubtedly led to a situation where the nationalist Afrikaner and every individual inside the so-called greater Afrikaner grouping carries many unsolved psychological and political traumas and other dispositions with him over many years. This troubles the Afrikaner’s adjustment to the new, greater multi-racial society of South Africa. Many parts of Afrikaner history can possibly be traced back to the Afrikaner’s insufficient knowledge and lack of insight into his history. This includes the political malfunctioning of proto-Afrikaners in the Boer republics after 1902; the transformation of various proto-Afrikaner groups into Afrikaners and later to nationalist Afrikaners and super Afrikaners in the Union and in the Republic of South Africa. The history of the Afrikaner has contributed greatly to the robustness and roughness that Afrikaners display in their daily behaviour and their thinking on racism and ethnicity. It is time for the Afrikaner to confront the good and the bad in their history, but this necessitates an honest and a comprehensive valuation of Afrikaner history and who the Afrikaner is. Only then can the identity of the present-day Afrikaner be understood and the group’s possible future been mapped. Only through such a true and objective re-evaluation of history can the Afrikaner’s real identity and place in the new and future South Africa be revealed; his dark fate as a result of the ill-treatment of non-Whites be made bearable; and the tragic meaning of his possible dissolution become understandable.11-16

Once the Afrikaner knows his own history and who he is, he will much more easily evaluate the role of cognitive thinking and life experiences in the past racial and ethnic domination and discrimination, and he would be able to decide how to handle the present-day environment in an effort to outlive dissolution.

The aim of this article is to research and to reflect on who the Afrikaner is.

The focus is on the Afrikaners’ European heritage, their identification as ‘Afrikaner’, their present-day population numbers, the assumed uniqueness of the Afrikaans language and Afrikaner culture, as well as their position inside the Afrikaanses group and their assumed ‘European blood-purity’.

This article is the first in a series of seven. The seven articles represent the following research topics: 1) Who is the Afrikaner?; 2) Historical determinants and role players in the establishment and maintenance of racial discrimination in the mindsets of Afrikaners; 3) Present and past negative determinants and role players in the establishment and upkeep of injustices in the mindsets of Afrikaners; 4) The Afrikaner’s failure to understand, accept and integrate the indigenous realities of South Africa; 5) The vicious cycle of revenge and contra-revenge around apartheid; 6) The preparedness of and comprehensiveness with which Afrikaners deal with the treats and challenges of the new South Africa; 7) 2017 is the time for thinking, planning and action.

The overarching intention of the total study is determine the future position of the Afrikaner in the year 2117.

2. Method

The research was done by means of a literature review. This method has the aim of building a viewpoint from the available evidence as the research develops. This approach is used in modern-day historical research where there is a lack of an established body of research, like the Afrikaner’s present-day and future position in South Africa. The databases used were EBSCOHost and Sabinet online, and sources included articles from 2007 to 2017, books for the period 1944 to 2017, government documents covering the period 1955 and newspapers for the period 2016 to 2017. These sources were consulted to reflect on the Afrikaners and to the put thought, views and opinions on the Afrikaners in perspective. 17-19

The research findings are presented in narrative format.

3. Results

3.1 Role of ethnicity and race in discrimination

Most of the social domination and discrimination that has ravaged societies over the centuries was primary activated by ethnicity and race. Ethnicity is the combination of the language, habits, customs, and rituals practiced in the house, the school and the religious life of a person or group. Ethnic differences do not necessary include racial differences. Indeed, one single determinant, like language, is sometimes enough to distinguish two ethnic groups within the same racial group. Such a small difference can start discrimination, violence and even genocide. Race, hereto, is seen as inherited physical characteristics, transmitted from parents to children in their DNA. Racism is a doctrine of innate or biological superiority, which, in its classical form, leads to discrimination that deprives members of victimized groups of equal protection under the laws and of a proper lifestyle. Race per se is one of the most devastating determinants in racial discrimination and genocide worldwide, especially from the middle-1800s to the middle-1900s. Although race and ethnicity are mostly seen and discussed as two separate entities, they are seldom active separately. Usually they form a sole determinant in genocide together, or even in the common discriminations of daily life.1,20-22

In contrast to above outcomes in the thinking and the behaviour of men on race and ethnic differences, the science of modern genetics reveals that human beings are remarkably alike and that all humans belong to one species in terms of DNA. The origin of this one species can be traced back to Africa between 100 000 and 200 000 years ago. This species only started to spread to the new continents as late as 60 000 years ago. Also, it must be noted that the differences used to denote racial identities in South Africa, like for instance an Afrikaner or a Zulu, are superficial. The distinctions were and are still the basis of racial and ethnic discrimination. The darker pigmentation in the melanocytes of peoples whose ancestors lived close to the equator, and the physiognomy which makes eyes narrower and noses shorter at the eastern end of the great Eurasian landmass, as well as hair types, are of secondary importance. Geographical dispersion led to humans forming groups that became physically quite distinct over time, but below the skin, peoples are quite similar. Furthermore, despite outward differences; great distances between groups and mutual incomprehension, these so-called “unique races” of the earth have intermingled.1

Notwithstanding the above biological similarity many people, including the Afrikaner specifically, have thought and acted as if the so-called physically distinctive races were separate species, especially during the 20th century. Specific individuals and groups who are different were classified as somehow ‘subhuman’. 1,21-23

It seems in this context as if humans, notwithstanding our intelligence and cognitive insight, and thus a logical awareness that genetic racial differences may indeed be insignificant; have to a certain extent, been driven by an inherent psych-biological disposition that is designed to attach importance to racial differences . These differences have led to intense discrimination and even the murder of people based on their race and class.1

The inclination to discriminate against other racial groups and against people of the same race simply on cultural, religious and political grounds is not unique to the Afrikaner, even though it is a behaviour that is sometimes be seen by psychologists as a psycho-pathology.3,24-26

Various situations, like the Nazi genocide of the Jews and the ongoing modern-day human tragedies in Israel and Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and less prominent racial and ethnic conflicts in modern-day USA and Europe, illustrate this world-wide inclination. 1,4,27-30

Research shows that most of the Y-chromosomes found in Jewish males are the same as those found in other Middle Eastern men, meaning that notwithstanding their bitter hate and pathological murdering of each other, Israelis and Palestinians are genetically very close. Their inter-racial discrimination orientation is therefore rather based on an ethnic life style: religious differences, socio-economical classes and social behaviours. These differences play the dominant role, rather than pure racial content.1

As another example, it seems as racial and ethnic prejudices (based on physical and cultural differences) are practiced in combination in the USA to create and maintain White-on-Black discrimination. Although an American study shows that between 20% and 25% of the DNA of most African Americans can be traced back to Europe, they are still treated as “European-different” by the so-called White Americans based on the physical differences. In addition, a lower social class and income classification is associated with Blacks in the USA, supporting and strengthening further racial discrimination.1,31,32

This illustrates the fact that visible physical features, like skin colour, hair type and facial features are undoubtedly still powerfully drivers in discrimination, regardless of the actual genetic closeness of the groups in question. Such external features can be much stronger role players than cultural determinants.

When racial and ethnic discrimination functions in combination, the outcome can have serious consequences for the victim. This negative outcome seems to be in line with the Afrikaners’ discriminatory attitude towards people of different colour and class. 33-35

In South Africa, the White Afrikaner discriminated against Blacks and mixed races for centuries by means of ethnic and racial domination of the political, economic, social and cultural spheres. Domination was structured, managed and executed primarily by means of class. Vilakazi36, p.43 aptly describes the machine-like precision with which the Afrikaner elite managed Apartheid discrimination when he writes:

The structure of racial domination is kept up by pillars of political, economic, social and cultural institutions, above all, bureaucracies, controlled and run by men and women from specific social classes. We should also keep in mind the crucial fact that, in our age of elections for State offices, particular parties and politicians find support and favour from, and arise out of, particular social classes; these parties and politicians may therefore champion the causes and pander to the prejudices of particular social classes, no matter what the racial group may be.

In day-to-day, practical terms, Whites, therefore, do not all dominate Blacks alike. Some exercise the domination directly and harshly; others exercise it still indirectly, but more ‘pleasantly’ and ‘kindly’; some exercise it indirectly, but still harshly; while still others exercise it indirectly, with sophistication and even ‘friendship’ for Blacks. All this depends on the class background of the Whites concerned, and the institutions within which they make their living within the huge edifice of racial domination.

In this context, Vilakazi36, p. 44 furthermore writes:

Blacks also do not experience racial domination in exactly similar ways, for there are growing class differentiations within the Black population. For the vast majority, however, domination is still direct, harsh and sharp-edged: this is true for farm workers, peasants and the working classes in industries, cities and White homes.

In addition to the clear class distinction between Whites and non-Whites, the Apartheid regime grouped all Blacks together as one ethnic group to fit the political domination and institutionalised discrimination.

The Afrikaner unfortunately wears the same “stained cloak” of serious racial and ethnic discriminations as the German, Jew, Palestinian, Briton, the American and many other nationalities and races worldwide, guilty or not guilty. This “dark past” of the Afrikaner must therefore be addressed in a study on the future of the Afrikaner as an individual, group or tribe. This includes addressing who he is, how he was formed and where he comes from. This is a historical issue with an immense impact on today’s Afrikaners and their psychological experience of the new South Africa. The issue has thus far deliberately been avoided by the Afrikaner himself. However, avoiding the past out of a sense of shame is unnecessary. The Afrikaner’s history is no more shocking and tragical than that of the Zulu or the Xhosa tribes or the Scots or Ukrainians, and it must be thoroughly understood to understand the present day and future inclinations and intentions of this group of people.

An understanding of the Afrikaners’ history will hopefully shed light on why they practiced racial discrimination to such an extreme and for so long. The unavoidable questions are: Were these discriminatory beliefs driven by a need to keep their assumed pure European bloodline, which makes them “better” than non-Whites, pure at all times? Was it driven by a psycho-pathological mindset on race and White supremacy? Was it shaped by unhappy life experiences during their development that became learned and internalised ideas that drove their thinking and actions? Was it driven by inborn psychopathic inclinations in their psyche, making them selfish and conscienceless so that they put their interests first at the cost of others’ interests and lives?

It is of utmost importance to understand the above concepts related to Afrikaner history to determine and to describe the role of race and ethnicity in the discriminatory inclinations of the Afrikaner. The following questions are prominent in this regard:

Do Afrikaners as Whites from the Afrikaner ethnic group and the Blacks in South Africa truly differ so much that these differences could have led to the Afrikaner’s negative attitudes towards other races and to the resulting discrimination?

Are the seemingly unique features of the Afrikaner, like their status as a people, their exclusive Afrikaans language, the name “Afrikaner”, their significance in terms of numbers, the Afrikaner culture and their “pure” White bloodline true reflections of who Afrikaners are?

These features are described and evaluated in the following sub-divisions.

3.2.1 The Afrikaner people

Over the years, a vast body of literature on the proto-Afrikaners and later the nationalist Afrikaners has come to reflect them as members of the exclusive Afrikaner people. This group identity was foregrounded after 1948 with the Malan-Strydom-Verwoerd doctrine of the Afrikaners as a unique European-race that developed over many years in the Cape and who is permanently established in Africa. This idea of the Afrikaner resulted from the political and social domination of civil society by the National Party (NP), the Afrikaner Broederbond (AB) and various Dutch Calvinist Protestant churches, especially the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC). These forces undoubtedly influenced people to internalise this Afrikaner mindset and lifestyle.3,37-39

For many reasons this trend could not be successfully challenged before the early 1990s. There was great political force behind this mindset. Many dissident Afrikaners, English-speaking Whites and of course all the Blacks endured it in silence. The power behind this indoctrination started to lose steam after 1994 with the constant decline of the Afrikaner numbers and their political disempowerment. The Black majority also embraced the new politically free and democratic environment and started to look at the Afrikaners critically. They regarded the Afrikaner as a group that lacks any direct association with or support from Europe. They are merely a minority group of South Africa. This threw suspicion on the status of the Afrikaner as a people. During the Apartheid regime, most Blacks groups were restricted to certain territories and areas and classified in terms of tribes. In the new South Africa, all the tribes were collected to form the total population of South Africa and a new South African nation. In a certain sense, this diminished the status of the Afrikaner as the South African people to one of many tribes that together constitute a nation. 7,36,40

With reference to the concept Afrikaner nation, the Anglo Boer War veteran and later South African nationalist politician, JBM Hertzog, reflected that the founding of the Union of South Africa in 1910 seemingly created a new White nation in the minds of White liberals. This new nation was a South African nation, styled according to the thinking and doctrines of the British Empire. This nation was set to replace ideas of an Afrikaner identity and nation as it existed before 1910. Hertzog rejected any such ideas and nipped them in the bud. He acknowledged only the Afrikaner nation when he stated that the Afrikaner developed in South Africa, complete with the language of Afrikaans, as a new nation that had incorporated Dutch, French and German cultural and biological elements. Hertzog hailed the existence of an Afrikaner nation as early as the 1910s.3

At the same time, Hertzog admitted that to be called a nation, a strong nationalism is needed. This necessitated a comprehensive unity that required more than the existence of a shared religious, own language, culture, shared life values and racial nationalism. According to Hertzog, the Afrikaans people still lacked in this area by the 1910s. Indeed, the Afrikaner nation, later presented as a fact by the South African nationalist Afrikaner prime-ministers DF Malan and JG Strydom, also failed with regard to these requirements. The mono-ethnic NP and their leader Verwoerd’s efforts to establish a territory for Afrikaners and other Whites by means of Apartheid failed the test of time after the decline in the power base of the Afrikaners.37

What was seen at the time and is still constantly propagated today as an Afrikaner nation, was nothing more than and emotional and political rhetoric to motivate a subgroup of nationalist Afrikaners to support the Apartheid ideologies of leaders such as Malan, Strydom and Verwoerd (three persons seen by the opposition of Apartheid as Nazi-orientated). This subgroup stands separate from the total Afrikaner population. Many members of this group of nationalist Afrikaners who belonged to the NP, AB and the DRC (and whom Giliomee41, p. 11describes as NP-Broederbonder-Afrikaners) remains caught in this way of thinking and doing. They stuck to this notion of the Afrikaner nation after the founding of the Verwoerd republic in 1961 and its collapse and they stick to it even today. The NP-AB-DRC-classification of people who upheld the concepts Afrikaner nation and Afrikaner identity, is distinct from the so-called “SAP-Afrikaners”, followers of the Smuts group, with their less comprehensive Afrikaner identification and nation status3,39,41,42 . This conclusion is in line with various other historical and political researchers.7,37,43

Giliomee7 reflects that Afrikaner nationalism has dominated South Africa for so long that it has come to look like a fixed feature in the history. In this context of contradictions, his states that in the 1890s there was no conscious Afrikaner nationalism or movement. In fact, there was no recognisable Afrikaner or Afrikaner nation, no agreement about the term Afrikaner, while the Afrikaans language was a despised “kitchen” or “Hottentot” language. Giliomee7, p. 7 writes:

Contemporary observers in the 1870s and 1880s identified a distinct ethnic segment within the White population of southern Africa. They were people from Dutch, German or French descent, with a considerable sprinkling of Black ancestors who had merged into a group in the course of the eighteenth century. With few exceptions, members married inside the group, belonged to the one of the three Reformed Churches, spoke Dutch or Afrikaans at home, and had a largely shared history”.

It is important to note that the issues around nation status and nationalism are much more complicated and comprehensive than the propagandists of an Afrikaner nation or an Afrikaner identity seem to understand. While the Afrikaners pride themselves in the fact that they originate from age-old nations like the Dutch, Germans and French, it seems that these nations themselves are not that old. Giliomee7 shows in this regard that studies of ethnic movements in Eastern Europe and the Third World indicate that the ethnic and national identity that forms a nation is not natural, but artificial inventions driven by political, economic and social alliances of distinct classes to empower them to face the everyday and long-term challenges of life. As such, many nations are not as old as generally believed and accepted. Sometimes a situation requires a group to have more than a vague idea about the race of groups, their culture and history. They are forced to invent a national identity and to become a political nation for the sake of empowerment. This development path, as with that of many European nations and thus the Afrikaners’ European fore-bearers, repeated itself with the development of the Afrikaner identity and nation concept, although it seems to be less successful than the creations of their fore-bearers.

The Afrikaner only became prominent in South African history as a so-called nation because of their early political and military power and dominance of other groups in the Cape, not because they were by any means sacred. The South African Coloureds show the same dynamics and uniqueness as the Afrikaners, but they were stigmatised and side-lined from the start simply because they are not “pure Europeans” and because they lacked social, economic, political and military power from 1652 onwards to position themselves as a significant racial group. The same is goes for the Griquas. This group formed before permanent settlement at the Cape from contact between Portuguese sailors visiting the Cape and Khoi women. Later, after 1652, this new ethnic group was strengthened by further miscegenation between White colonists at the Cape and Khoi women. Adam Kok (born circa 1710) grouped them together as a people in the 18th century. Initially known as “Basters” (Bastards), their name was changed to Griqua in 1813 under influence of a London missionary because of the stigma surrounding the word “bastard” in Europe. They became, just like the pro-Afrikaners, established as a “nation”, although much fewer in numbers than the Cape Coloureds. They settled on Kok’s farm Klaarwater, later to be known as Griekwastad in the region known as Griekwaland-Wes. The same political, economic and military disempowerment that the Coloureds experienced from early on became their fate. They were side-lined from the social, economic and political mainstream and were denied a prominent role as a “nation” equal to the Afrikaners.41,44,45

Within the ranks of the NP leadership, it was only in 1981 that a minister in a NP cabinet, Dr PGJ Koornhof, showed the courage to admit that the Afrikaners are only one population group among 14 other groups in South Africa.42 This opinion was later supported by president PW Botha in 1986 when he said that the peoples of South Africa form one nation. This served as a clear indication of how the various minority and majority groups inside the borders of the country were encircling Afrikaners, and the Afrikaner was only one of the groups in the country. Although this statement was part of the opportunistic neo-Apartheid (liberal) thinking that entered the mindset of the leadership of the NP during the 1980s, it was a clear admission that there is and has never been an Afrikaner nation.40 Koornhof and Botha’s viewpoints, although a century later, do not differ from what Paul Kruger said in 188346, p. 356: “Evenzo zal ik steeds mijn hartelike ondersteuning schenken aan elke poging ener nauwere verbinding tussen de staten en kolonieën van Zuid-Afrika ter kweking van een Zuid-Afrikaanse natie…”. In Kruger’s view, there was no Afrikaner nation in the 1880s or in view future at the time.

It is doubtful that one could say that the Afrikaner was a true nation in the 1910s or in 2017. The opportunistic and misleading political rhetoric common from the 1940s to the early 1980s, is seldom heard in public or reflected in literature these days.

3.2.2 Afrikaans language

The Afrikaans language has been and is still one of the prominent reasons why Afrikaners aim to maintain exclusively Afrikaans public universities, schools and business entities and to identify villages, townships and cities that date from before 1994 with Afrikaner names. Discrimination against Afrikaans in social life and the formally phasing out of the language at public institutions has led to various court cases and other formal protests. Indeed, its conservation, together with the Afrikaner identity and name, is one of the main reasons why some aspire to an independent Afrikaner state in South Africa. For the majority of Afrikaners, Afrikaans is undoubtedly a personal heirloom, a unique ethno-language, covered in their believed ethnic and racial heretage.47-59

The present official and unofficial attitude of the ANC government towards Afrikaans is most negative, discriminatory and driven by the single intention to demolish Afrikaans as a commonly used public language, basically because it is still seen as the language of the oppressor. These discriminative actions are reflected more and more in the judicial system, at universities and schools and public services of South Africa. This is also seen as a focused and planned effort to diminish the Afrikaners legal, political, economic, personal and civil rights and positions. Afrikaners have reactions to these official and unofficial conducts. The reactions are becoming more and more aggressive and negative towards the government, with fierce court cases, public publications and comments, and various other agitations.60-69

Is this idea that the Afrikaans language belongs solely to the present-day Afrikaners correct?

It is important to study the history of and the development of the language Afrikaans to find an answer to this question.

Afrikaans, currently the third most widely spoken home language in South Africa, evolved from the Dutch vernacular of South Holland. It was initially spoken as a Dutch dialect (with some varieties) by the proto-Afrikaner settlers on the Cape frontier during the eighteenth century. These people were socially and culturally isolated and less educated than the Cape Dutch living in Cape Town and its immediate environment. In this isolation and in the muddle of various races and classes living and working together – Europeans, Hottentots, the Khoi-San, Negro and Indian-Malaysian slaves – and the dialect already different from the original Dutch, it became a way of daily communication between the groups. From there the early reference to it as the “taal” (language), but something of doubtful quality and inferior status. It can with right be said that various racial groups – the French, German, British, Portuguese, the European free burghers, as well as slaves from Southeast Asia like Malaysia, Madagascar and native Africans, Khoikhoi and people of mixed descent – all contributed to this emerging language (initially described as “Kitchen” or “Hottentot” Afrikaans) by adding some of their own vocabulary and cultural practices.7,71-73

From the late 17th century onwards, the Dutch spoken at the Cape started to develop differences from the original Dutch with respect to morphology, pronunciation, accent, and to a certain extent, also in syntax and vocabulary. The language spoken in the Cape start to assimilate influences from the already established new dialect often described with names such as “Cape Dutch”, “African Dutch”, “Kitchen (Kombuis) Dutch”, “Hottentot Dutch” and “Taal” (meaning: language). This proto-Afrikaans only started to develop into a separate language by the 19th century.7,74

Afrikaans initially developed slowly. The first print of proto-Afrikaans only appeared during the early 19th century. Much of the work to develop Afrikaans into a separate language was initially done by the “Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners”.7,39

Pure Dutch remained the official language at the Cape for a long time. This formal use of Dutch continued even after the establishment of the Union of South Africa. In fact, much objection was raised against efforts to legalise Afrikaans as a new language until the 1900s, mostly from Afrikaners themselves. One reason for the official pleas to recognise Afrikaans was the fact that it was already the language used at universities, courts and schools from as early as 1915. It was only in 1925 that Afrikaans was given equal status to Dutch by an act passed by parliament. It became one of the two official languages (with English the second) of the Union of South Africa. As a legal entity, Afrikaans is not yet a century old in 2017. In the new South Africa, Afrikaans has lost its early primary status and is recognised today as one of the eleven official languages and as an African language. Notwithstanding this “African uniqueness” and its remaining independent status as a language, the South African Dutch dialect, known today as Afrikaans, and the Dutch spoken in The Netherlands are still very similar, so much that it is mutually intelligible. This makes it less of an exclusive and independent language than what Afrikaners many times argue.39,48,58,68,74

Second, regarding the initial creators and speakers of Afrikaans at the Cape, there is, as already indicated, no doubt that the early Dutch-speaking White settlers were the main creators of Afrikaans and that they initially guided its development. As also already indicated, other ethnic and racial groups, especially those who were living in the countryside, also contributed to the formation of Afrikaans with vocabulary from their mother tongues. These inputs were limited to contributions to the Dutch dialect. However, newcomers to the colony such as German and French settlers, Cape slaves and non-White groups, usually reverted to the use of Dutch and the later to the various dialects of Dutch and proto-Afrikaans. They used proto-Afrikaans in their communication with their owners, other slaves and non-Whites. In this way, the language was maintained and expanded by the non-Whites as well. Indeed, the inclusive labelling of the “Taal” as “Kombuis” and “Hottentot” Afrikaans aptly illustrates the impact and involvement of household workers (slaves) and other free workers and other indigenous peoples in the forming of the language. It is not the “elite” of the Cape Dutch (Whites) who should be honoured as the sole fathers of Afrikaans. The prefixes “kombuis” and “Hottentot” indicates an early stigma associated with the language because it was widely used by the lower socio-economical classes and lower level working classes (which included mostly non-Whites and slaves) in their mutual communication away from the more complicated Dutch language that was used by the educated Whites at the Cape.39,48,49,75-77

The influence of slaves and non-Whites on Afrikaans was greatly affected by the fact that by 1754 there were only 6 000 Whites in the Cape, but they already far outnumbered by the imported slaves. This means that in comparison with the proto-Afrikaners (Whites), an equal, if not larger proportion of these non-Whites was already speaking “Kombuis” and “Hottentot” Afrikaans by the late-1700s. In 1806, the proto-Afrikaners numbered 26 720 or 36% of the colony’s population, meaning that there were already 74 222 other people (mostly non-Afrikaners or non-Whites) at the Cape, of whom most spoke a kind of proto-Afrikaans or a Dutch dialect. “Kombuis” or “Hottentot” Afrikaans” was most probably forced on workers, but it was nurtured by the non-Whites as their only medium of communication with the proto-Afrikaners.7,39,78

Afrikaans is indeed a multicultural and multiracial language, developed and established to a certain extent by the various races of South Africa, starting in 1652. Ownership of the language rests with all South Africa people. Its survival as an official language is strongly steered and guarded by the so-called Bruin (Brown) Afrikaners or Coloureds. This group is starting to claim more and more ownership of the language and its various dialects. It seems as if they regard the use of Afrikaans as their main communication medium in schools, universities, at work, and in their personal and social lives as absolutely essential and not a matter open for discussion or negotiation for the future. The fact that this group represents more than 3.6 million people and that they are constantly growing in numbers, makes them a factor that the ANC should take into account in its discrimination against Afrikaans. The ANC think of the Brown population as grouped with the Blacks who they freed from oppression, from the Afrikaner. It seems that this group, together with Black Afrikaans speakers (making up a group of more or less 6 million persons in total) will be the rescuers of the language, and not the Afrikaner.41,48,49,75,77,79-81

3.2. Afrikaanses

The term “Afrikaanses” is a new group name that sprouted by the late 2000s. It is used by some nationalist Afrikaners in their efforts to include other racial and ethnic Afrikaans speakers into the Afrikaner-grouping, like the Cape Coloureds, solely to strengthen the Afrikaners’ fading political empowerment and to obtain numbers in an effort to avoid the dissolution awaiting the Afrikaner in a century’s time. Nationalist Afrikaners are now also making an effort to involve other Afrikaans speakers of non-White status to assure the existence of the name Afrikaner, its identity as a group and the conservation of the Afrikaans language in the near future by their offering to “redefine” the name and entity “Afrikaner”. It is a very vague and an undefined offer on the one hand, and a very opportunistic offer on the other. It is too little too late, and totally inappropriate and irrelevant within the political context of modern-day South Africa. “Afrikaanses” have been existing for a long time apart from the Afrikaners and they are not as a group in need of mercy and incorporation to be saved or to be helped as a group. This effort to redefine the name Afrikaner and to make it more comprehensive so that it includes other ethnicities and races, seems to be nothing more than a masked wish to depart from the name “Afrikaner” to get away from the exclusivity of the nationalist Afrikaners who were mostly members and supporters of the NP, AB and DRC. This implies that the proponents of the redefinition of the name “Afrikaner” do not really themselves understand the concept and entity that is the Afrikaner tribe, its position in relation to the other South African tribes and its future in the new South Africa. In 2017, nationalist Afrikaners find themselves in doubt about the Afrikaner’s identity and the Afrikaans language, asking: “whereto from now for us?”. The Afrikaanses, on the other hand, can answer with confidence “we are here and ready for the future”.13,50,59,82

As already indicated, the name “Afrikaanse” is not a new front name or a new front entity or group that has been fabricated to suit the Afrikaner’s frame of reference or to give him an escape route. To the contrary, this group (even tribe) has been in existence from 1652 (as evidenced in their contribution to the development of the Dutch dialect “Kombuis” and “Hottentot” Afrikaans), although mostly as an unspecified background role player up to the late 1990s and the end of Apartheid. They are now, in terms of the present-day political, social and economical empowerment, free and strong enough to move out of the shadow of the nationalist Afrikaners and their Apartheid dominance. Indeed, the Afrikaanses are more than ready to incorporate and to steer the growing number of aimless Afrikaners as individuals, but stripped from their stigmatised past. There is no need for the Afrikaanses to join the Afrikaners, as some nationalist Afrikaners shamelessly try to do. As said, it is just the opposite: the Afrikaanses have become the present-day parents and safe house for the Afrikaners in a future South Africa.48-50,59,77,83

There have been various developing stages after the early Cape Settlement and the later Cape Colony. The identity of the “Afrikaner” grew from “Dutch” to “Cape Dutch” to “proto-Afrikaner” to “Afrikaner”. This Afrikaner identity is now in an end stage. A new entity is now starting to awake, the “Afrikaanse” of today and tomorrow.75,76,83

Who are the Afrikaanses?

All South Africans who speak Afrikaans at home can be defined as “Afrikaanses”. Ethnic features, like religious beliefs and practices, schooling and political orientation and racial features are not role players in inclusion at all. These characteristics take second place. Members are identified by only one thing: they are “Bruin” or Coloured Afrikaanses, Afrikaner Afrikaanses, Black Afrikaanses, etc. There are surely great similarities between some “Afrikaanses”, like adhering to Christianity, but this feature is also contradicted by the inclusion of some Islam “Afrikaanses”. The groups includes different political orientations or membership of different political groupings and it includes members from the Black, White, Coloured and Indian communities and various other mixed races.49,75,80,83-86

The “Afrikaanses” is an open non-racial and non-ethnic social group defined as a group by only a single linguistic factor, Afrikaans as mother tongue. As with all developing cultural groups, uniformity in political, religious and other behaviours can follow in time, but it will surely be free from the comprehensive and extreme Afrikaner dogma, developed and nurtured by the nationalist Afrikaners for over a century and more.

The first foundations for public approval for the classification “Afrikaanses” was laid by the AB in 1998 when this nationalist Afrikaner group tried in vain to grow their dwindling numbers by declaring that all those who show a broad inclination towards the nationalistic Afrikaner values and lifestyle should be accepted as Afrikaners.82

When one looks at the number of non-Afrikaners who qualify as Afrikaanses based on the criterion of using Afrikaans in their daily lives, the numbers are strong. It is important to note in this regard that in 2011, many of the 13.5% of the total South African population who spoke Afrikaans at home were Blacks, Coloureds and Indians and not Whites. The ration of non-Afrikaners to Afrikaanses who speak Afrikaans at home is 60:40. To be more precise, of the approximately 7.5 million South Africans whose mother tongue is Afrikaans, only more or less 2.7 million were White, compared to the 3.6 million Coloureds and 1.2 million other non-White Afrikaans speakers at home. The Coloured population shows a constant growth as the majority Afrikaans speakers. In total is it estimated that 20 million South Africans speak Afrikaans every day in some form during their communication at work or in their social life, a number that completely overshadows the present-day Afrikaners’ input.74,75,80,86-88

There is also evidence that the number of non-Whites whose mother tongue is Afrikaans is increasing: in 2001 they were 5.98 million, compared to 6.9 million in 2011, representing a rise of nearly one million in ten years. The Northern Cape (53.8%) and the Western Cape (49.7%) have the highest percentages of Afrikaans speakers of all the South African provinces. These numbers include a strong non-Whites element, already making regional establishments or enclaves of Afrikaanses possible.74,75,80,86

It is clear that the “Afrikaanses” has become an important non-racial- and non-ethnic cluster that can play a dynamic role in the new South Africa. The group is borderless in terms of culture, ethnicity and race, seasoned and schooled in assimilation and miscegenation over more than three centuries. They have lived both inside and outside the restrictions and stigmas of Apartheid, their unbounded interrelationships offer them the opportunity to eradicate the racial and ethnic discrimination so inherent to the nationalist Afrikaners and which led them to the immense disrespect for Afrikaans as the language of the oppressor. The Afrikaanses, it seems, have the ability to secure a better future citizen’s place for themselves and their descendants in new South Africa. This differs from the insecure Afrikaners. Only one determinant plays a role in their minds, to differentiate them from the rest of the South African population with their adaptable and politics-free Afrikaans language.13,59,89,90

The question left at this stage is: can every Afrikaner become an Afrikaanse? To a certain extent, the Afrikaner’s transformation to new political affiliations from die-hard NP-Broederbonders already started after 1994 after the collapsed of the NP. Many repositioned to the DA and smaller Afrikaner-orientated parties, a small group even joined the ANC. But, for most of these Afrikaners the political focus was on finding a political organisation that they believe can serve their needs as the NP did. The Afrikaanses, on the other hand, stand cultural and politically apart from the interests of the nationalist Afrikaner identity. There are two big obstacles that the nationalist Afrikaner has to overcome to become an “Afrikaanse”. First, he would have change as an individual to a person without the collective baggage of the nationalist Afrikaner culture that he supported for many years and was born into. Secondly, he would have to denounce in all honesty all the racial and ethnic attitudes so inherently part of the nationalist Afrikaner regime before 1994. This change seems to be a small step for a suppressed slave or an individual used to discrimination for his whole life, but a giant and difficult step for a rigid nationalist Afrikaner.

3.2.4 The name of the Afrikaner

The naming and positioning of the “Afrikaner” within the South African society and in the international context as a specific entity followed the same path that his main ancestors, the Dutch, Germans and the French, embarked on centuries ago. Groups identify themselves by fronting a specific identifying name, a clear racial and ethnic orientation and entity, a unique language ability and preference, a well-defined and comprehensive economical system, a geographic region and specific cultural habits, customs and traditions. This includes unique folklore, religious and political beliefs, education and principles. This complex is jealously guarded, and any negative influences or intruders that can endanger its continuation, are fearlessly attacked, either verbally or physically in the form of wars. In addition, its growth and spread other non-related groups and subordinates are scrumptiously promoted and sometimes shamelessly forced to subordinate them and sometimes incorporate them into the group. In South Africa this was done through Apartheid and its strict discriminative laws imposed by the nationalist Afrikaners.21,22,27,36,38,39,42,91

In South Africa the early White political dispensation starting in 1652 and especially the later Afrikaner political dispensation starting in 1902, strictly adhered to the above methods. Here, the name “Afrikaner”, as if truly stretching from 1652, the perceived uniqueness of the language “Afrikaans” as something developed by and belonging solely to the Afrikaner from the beginning, and the exclusiveness of the Afrikaner’s race orientation, labelled as “pure” White, European and Caucasian, became prominent determinants and drivers in the Afrikaner’s racial and ethnic thinking and planning. But did these assumed successes and achievements of the Afrikaner really meet the criteria of fact and truth?3,26,38,39,92

It seems that the name “Afrikaner” is clouded by controversy and contradictions. It is clear that the Whites at the Cape saw themselves as a part of Europe and as citizens of their various European homelands during the early colonial period, even up to the late 1800s, instead of a new race or ethnic population or citizen at the Cape. The fact is that the name “Afrikaner” did not denote a group identity for many years after 1652. The early Cape ancestors of the today’s Afrikaners were simply described as “Christians”, “colonists”, “emigrants”, “inhabitants” or “ingezeetenens”, “free citizens” or “vrijburgers” and “burghers” for a long time. Even the name “Boer” is a late-comer on the scene.26,39,92-94
.
The Cape Colony resident, Hendrik Biebouw’s reference to himself as an “Afrikaander” (“Africander”) in 1707 can not been seen as irrefutable evidence that the “Afrikaner” was already a specific name of an identifiable White group at the Cape. To the contrary, Biebouw’s “Afrikaander” identity or classification seems more applicable to the numerous half-castes, Coloureds and other mixed groups at the Cape at that time. These mixed groups often had the same White and non-White ancestors as today’s Afrikaners, but even at that point they had already begun to develop biologically and culturally away from the Whites as an early branch of the existing Cape Coloured people.95,96

Above finding is in line with that of Giliomee7, p. 8 when he states:

In the eighteenth century the term Africander (Afrikaner) was used primarily for the offspring of slaves born in Africa, usually out of liaisons with ex-slaves, Khoisan or Whites. This usage continued until little more than a century ago [more or less 1890]. An official list of Cape Town prostitutes, taken in 1868, was headed by ‘Africanders’, referring to people of mixed descent. By 1880 the designation Afrikaner was also claimed by some Africans in the Eastern Cape. After a branch of the Afrikaner Bond was established in Cradock an African organisation, the Imbubwe, was formed. Its members claimed that their organisation was the true Afrikaner Bond while the White organisation was merely the Boeren Bond.▼

A community of approximately 100 families, descendants of the freed slaves who accompanied the Voortrekkers to Transvaal in the middle 1800s and settled in 1886 at Onverwacht near the town Cullinan after receiving land from Paul Kruger. They also identify themselves as “Afrikaners” and proudly called themselves “Boer” to this day. They speak Afrikaans as first language and follow Afrikaner traditions, making the exclusive name “Afrikaner” more complex, undefined and multi-racial. This non-White group identification, together with the claims of the Eastern Cape Blacks that they are Afrikaners, foregrounds Biebouw’s remark in 1707 on being an “Afrikaner/Afrikaander/Africander” and that of the Cape prostitutes of mixed descent who called themselves “Afrikaner/Africander” as early as 1890. It was clearly a more non-White than White group in the beginning.97,98

History resulted in three kinds of divisions among the early Dutch-Afrikaner grouping: urban/rural, regional and a class division, each with clear cultural overtones. The urban/rural division was particular salient – those considered the better-educated and more civilised Cape Dutch of the Western Cape or interior towns versus those considered to be ignorant, illiterate and backward Boers living on farms beyond the Western Cape. Regional differences brought a division between the Western Cape Afrikaners and the later Transvaal Boer Afrikaners, especially based on their economical differences. The class differences contained a further difference within the rural Dutch-Afrikaner Boer society with the wealthy land-holding farmers versus the marginalised, poor farmers, many of them bywoners without any land. Many of these poor Dutch-Afrikaners were abused by the rich Boer (Dutch)-Afrikaners and they were not financially and physically supported by the governments of the Boer republics. They were forced out of work on farms where cheaper Black tenants provided the rich Boers with cheaper labour, leading to further unemployment, illiteracy and poverty. During the Anglo Boer War these Boer bywoners formed the bulk of the ‘joiners’ who sided with the British, not only splitting a uniform Afrikaner nation and Afrikaner identity even further, but also delaying the establishment of the culture for many years to come.7

It is therefore clear that by the early 1800s two distinct White groups had developed under the umbrella of the proto-Afrikaner in the Cape Colony, namely the “Cape Dutch” and the “Boers”. These two broad groups in time not only became culturally and economically different from each other, but to a certain extent stood at opposite ends of the continuum of political and socio-religious thinking and doing. The Cape Dutch group, living in and around Cape Town, was generally comprised of a better educated and socially developed society, compared to the Boers who were living in isolation in the country-side with a total lack of educational and cultural facilities. Most of the Cape Dutch (who only adopted and promoted the name “Afrikaner” after the 1900s) of the Cape Colony were pro-British and initially sided with the DRC against the Great Trek of approximate 10 000 Boers [the “Voortrekkers” (First Movers or Pioneers)] who migrated to what became Natal, the Transvaal, Orange Free State and Northern Cape in 1830 to 1840. These cultural and other differences between the Cape Dutch and the Boers and their separate development as two different proto-Afrikaner peoples, are reflected in the Cape Dutch hostility towards the Boers. Some of the Cape Dutch even fought on the side of the British against the Boers. This intimate Cape Dutch-Briton association found expression the many marriages and social and business relations between the Cape Dutch and the British in the early Cape. Many of today’s well-known Afrikaner families supplied the British with food stock for their fighting soldiers in Transvaal and the Free State and were strong British-orientated Cape politicians in line with Cecil John Rhodes’ thinking.3,26,38,39,92,99

The name “Boer” was initially used to refer to the occupation of the “Trek Boers” (travelling farmers) on the Eastern Cape frontier of the Colony around the early 1700s. This group gradually moved northwards to form the “Grens Boers” (border farmers). They later became the vast majority of the “Voortrekkers”. In this way “Boer” became a name for most of the proto-Afrikaners who permanently lived north of the Cape’s eastern border and later north of the Orange River. This group was openly anti-British and anti-colonialist and they had clear ethnic and racial discriminatory tendencies based on their religion. Their lifestyle grew out of their pioneer circumstances and their exposure to a pre-modern environment. These “Boers” were mostly involved in agriculture, living in isolation and lacking basic facilities like schools and career training facilities, hospitals, religious institutions, civil services and the government structures that the Cape Dutch enjoyed and promoted. The Boers’ homes, travelling facilities and amenities seemed to be of a much lower quality and standard as that of the Cape Dutch. Their more rugged lifestyle was necessitated by the undeveloped and rough regions where they farmed. It contrasted their ancestors from Europe and the Cape Dutch in Cape Town and the Cape Colony’s way of living. Eventually this lifestyle spread gradually over the whole eastern border area. This more elementary culture was transferred to the first generation of Boers [now also named “burgers” (burghers)] of the Transvaal and the Free State by the “Voortrekkers”.38,39,82,93,94,100,101

The two groups of proto-Afrikaners, namely the Cape Dutch and the Boers, also differed in their use of the proto-Afrikaans dialect up to the late 1800s all over the Cape. The cultural and socio-economic differences became rooted in the name Boer, and this group started using the name Boer instead of Cape Dutch to identify them as a specific group. These differences later became political and socio-cultural characteristics with the founding of the two anti-British and outright racially discriminative Boer Republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The differences that highlighted the Boer and Burgher identification as distinct from Cape Dutch, were further strengthening by the two Anglo Boer Wars that followed. It left many of the Boers hostile and embittered towards the British and the Cape Dutch.39,82,101

The literature preceding the establishment of the Union of South Africa referred to the Transvaal and Free State Afrikaans-speaking citizens as “Boers” and not “Afrikaners.” People like general Smuts, who was initially from the Cape Colony, referred to himself as an “Afrikaner,” but this was at a much later stage during and after the establishment of the Union where new political opportunism played a role. His earlier references to himself, just after the Second Anglo Boer War was to an “old Cape colonialist” (“Kaapkolonialer”) and an old Capetonian (“Kapenaar”), simply meaning a citizen of the Cape Colony.92

It is important to note that three Afrikaner organisations were formed from the 1870s onwards to promote proto-Afrikaans and the Dutch Afrikaners’ interests in terms of an informal nationalism, which undoubtedly included the name “Afrikaner.” The first was the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners, followed by the establishment of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Boere Beschermingsvereniging (BBV) by Jan Hofmeyr in 1878 (representing capitalist farmers and businessmen, the pro-British capitalist Afrikaner nationalism). This was followed by the establishment of the Afrikaner Broederbond in 1879 by the reverend SJ du Toit (for a while it was called the Cape South African Party, but it changed back to Afrikaner Broederbond), representing a radical Afrikaner nationalism away from British domination. These three organisations all aimed to take care of the poor Afrikaans-speaking people’s interests in the Cape.3,7,26

This split into nationalism and a pro-British attitude strengthened a deep Afrikaner class divide and the divide into various opposing and competing sub-groups based on precise economic, social, educational and cultural lines in the Dutch-Afrikaner community. This kind of divide (a negative characteristic of the Afrikaners’ lifestyle and thinking) created conflict in Afrikaner ranks. They split their interests, which interfered with the development of a uniform Afrikaner nationalism. This conflict was further intensified when Hofmeyr captured control of the AB, steering it towards liberal politics and interests, away from the less educated and poor Afrikaners’ immediate politics and interests.7, 102

In the Orange Free State and Transvaal early Afrikaner nationalism was mainly fuelled by the Boer community’s input. It was driven by their hostility and hate of British imperialism and the British aggression against them during the Anglo Boer War (1899-1902). It stood in direct opposition to the pro-British nationalism of the Cape Dutch. A uniformed Afrikaner identity and nationalism was impossible in the Cape in the 1880s and after the outcome of the Anglo Boer War in Transvaal and Orange Free State after 1902. This made unity with the Cape Dutch immediately after 1910 impossible, slowing the development of the Afrikaner as a unified group. This development only continued with the political actions of DF Malan and the NP after 1913 and after 1910 with the intervention of Louis Botha and Jan Smuts to bring about Afrikaner–English reconciliation and reconciliation between the Southern Afrikaners with the Northern Afrikaners. This slowly brought about the unification of subgroups of Afrikaners towards the founding of an Afrikaner entity.7

It took the early Afrikaner architects of Afrikaner nationalism (later hijacked by the NP-AB-DRC Afrikaner nationalists) over a century, starting in 1880s, to establish the term Afrikaner and the Afrikaner “nation”, a dogma based on the “idea of an indigenous people occupying a common territory, having a common language, vigorous culture and proud history, identified by a common name and sharing consciousness of kind”, writes Giliomee.7, p. 13 Central to this is the deliberate transformation of proto-Afrikaans from a “kitchen” or “Hottentot” language to a language in its own right. It ultimately became a modern language with a proper body of literature, spoken by a specific group, namely the Afrikaner.7

Giliomee7, p. 12 writes:

They projected it as White man’s language which set the Afrikaners off from White English-speakers and Brown Afrikaans-speakers. The ethnic project also included the rewriting of history along nationalist lines. Prominent in this were the accounts of Afrikaner heroism and suffering, in particular the Great Trek and the Anglo-Boer War, and the efforts of the Afrikaners to maintain themselves as a distinct people among ‘savage’ and ‘heathen’ nations. A new nationalist ideology was also constructed. Derived ideas of more abstract nature were grafted upon long-standing beliefs about the need to maintain White supremacy and reject racial intercourse. Prominent among the derived ideas was Calvinism which was strongly propagated by Malan and his followers in the South and the Doppers of Potchefstroom in the North. This Calvinism, or rather neo-Calvinism, argued that God had ordained separate nations, each with a unique destiny, which charged the Afrikaners to maintain themselves in separate cultural, religious and political institutions”.

The main intention, said Giliomee7, was to give meaning to the rather amorphous concept of “Afrikaner,” yet a degree of ambivalence remained around the name for a long time, and it is still there today. The dictionary description of “Afrikander” in the in 1910s was still that it is a person ‘born of White parents in South Africa,” far removed from the political claim of some Cape Dutch as their exclusive name.7

The evidence shows that the name “Afrikaner” was possibly used in a rather non-descriptive way by the middle to late 1800s in the Cape Colony, especially around Cape Town, but not as an exclusive, identifiable and uniform name as it is used by today’s Afrikaners. The name “Afrikaner” to describe a uniform group only took hold after the Second Anglo Boer War when the “Boers” (also commonly identified and referred to as “Transvaal Burgers” or “Transvaal Boers” and “Vrystaat Burgers” or “Vrystaat Boers” respectively) of the two old Republics were left financially devastated and destitute as a result of their War efforts and many were forced to move to the cities for work and a living. In this new and alien environment, they were forced as individuals to adapt to a totally new social and political lifestyle and thinking. This political and economic new dawn, activated by the liberal Cape Dutch and the British authorities governing Southern Africa, affected the mindset of the Burghers of the old Transvaal and Free State. The masked Anglicisation efforts of the authorities promoted the new identity and name “Afrikaner,” which was at the time used to start the political reconciliation between the Cape Colony and the two old Republics. This name was also in line with the blanket name “Southern African” to activate the new South African citizenship created by the Union. In supporting this new “Afrikaner” identity and name, many of the old political leaders of the Transvaal and Free State who joined the new post-1902 South African political dispensation, started to echo more and more Afrikaner nationalism, and from there the use of the name “Afrikaner” for political opportunism.3,26,39,92,95,96,103

In addition, the political climate surrounding the formation of the Union of South Africa did not leave space for the incorporation of the name “Boer” into the new political context and process. This was especially sensitive for the Cape-based Cape Dutch Afrikaners. Leaders promoted the general term “Afrikaner” that was until then mostly associated with the Cape Dutch Afrikaner.3,26,39,82,103-105

It is clear that the name “Afrikaner” to describe the Afrikaners as a specific ethno-cultural group – so frequently used today in public and political literature – slowly emerged all over South Africa only after 1902 with the collapse of the two Boer republics. In 1902 the English author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, also referred to the Boers who moved eastwards from the Cape Colony in the middle 1800s as “Africanders.” It is unknown if this reference was affected by the new “status” of the Boers after 1902, or if it was a name already in use in the Cape, although not widely in the late 1800s. In retrospect, it seems to have been the new, uniformed and politically promoted name in use from 1902 onwards that influenced Doyle to refer to the trekkers in this way in his writing. It was a referral to these trekkers as early proto-Afrikaners. Even references to the name Afrikaner in public by prominent leaders like General Hertzog after 1902, do not confirmed the existence of an official and uniform group of “Afrikaners” before 1900. People like Hertzog and others offer no confirmation that the name “Afrikaner” was commonly used in the five political and governmental regions of South Africa before 1902 and thus automatically transferred to the Union. It must instead be seen also as a retro-perspective used by Hertzog and other old Boer leaders to describe the new South African scenario. Also, the new common use of the name Afrikaner and the popular descriptions of the history of the Afrikaner nation, offered political power to politicians after 1910 as they could mobilise political support and unity for their own future careers.3,7,26

Hertzog often contradicted himself when speaking about the identification of the Afrikaner. Even by 1921 Hertzog still used names like “Dutch/Afrikaans” versus “English-speaking Afrikaners” and “white and black Afrikander”. Politicians like Hertzog used the more inclusive variant when it suited their political purpose, rather than to be guided by true historical facts. John Vorster also used this kind of political rhetoric in the 1960s with the same short-sighted claim that the NP created the entity Afrikaner and the Afrikaans language.7

As can been seen, most of the political and emotional rhetoric used by Hertzog and later Vorster, failed to offer sound evidence to confirm their claims about the Afrikaner. At most, these terms serve as superficial retro-perspectives on the historical development of the Afrikaner.

Even now after a century, there is some evidence of resistance to the name “Afrikaner” and its broad ethnic and racial classification and stigma. This resistance comes from a small minority of White Boers. Some descendants of the “Boers” in certain geographical parts of South Africa still see themselves as a unique cultural minority that is separate from the larger “Afrikaner”-group, its culture and the name. They do not want to be associated with Afrikaner nationalism. Sub-group and regional names, like “kolonianer” “Boesmanlander”, “Bokveller”, “Bolander”, “Namakwalander”, “Kapenaar”, “Transvaler”, “Vrystater”, “Dopper-Afrikaner” and “Karoo-boer”, etc., are still used by remnants of these minorities to introduce and to identify themselves. In most of these cases, their status as South Africans takes second place, while they ignore the Afrikaner identity. Even the epithets of “joiner”, “hendsopper”, “traitor” and “National Scout” stuck in the minds of certain Afrikaner groups as more important identifications than the broad name “Afrikaner”. The strong “Boer” mentality still, after many years, lingers just below the surface. This is reflected in the use of the term by non-Whites as a name to identify abusive and racially prejudiced Afrikaans-speaking Whites.11,50,75,80,82,87,93,94,100,105-108

The inclination to differentiate between different sub-groups of Afrikaners and to split into factions can gain momentum in the future as the forced and to a certain extent artificial unity of the Afrikaners during the 1900s, starts to disintegrate. The empowerment of the Afrikaanses can disintegrate it further, if not totally over time.3,7,26,39,78,101,109,110

3.2.5 Afrikaners in numbers

Identifying the “true” Afrikaners as a specific group by looking at numbers is a very complex and controversial issue. The traditional classification of Afrikaners as all Whites who speak Afrikaans at home is also controversial and could have led to an over-estimation of their numbers for many years, offering them power as a political pressure group. The inclusion of Coloureds who go through as Whites in statistical research can be a confounding factor. Afrikaners who live outside South Africa permanently but still reflect as South African citizens can also lead to an enormous over-estimation. If the traditional classification is used, the numbers of the Afrikaners have declined dramatically since 1960 compared to the total population of South Africa. In 1960 they made up 10%, compared to only 5.7% of the total population in 2001, reflecting a 0.1% annual decline over 40 years. In 2011, this percentage dropped to 5.2%, reflecting a 0.05% annual decline over 10 years. This placed them below the Coloureds, whose numbers were 4 615 401 in 2011. The total number of Afrikaners living in South Africa in 2001 was estimated at 2 576 184, compared to 2 710 461 in 2011 (an estimated total of between 3.3 to 3.5 million when the Afrikaners living outside the borders are included). It is estimated that between 1994 and 2004, between 1 and 1.5 million Afrikaners left South Africa permanently. This emigration number was conservatively estimated for 2006 to 2011 at 112 046 and for 2011 to 2015 at 95 158.95,96,111-115

It seems that it is specifically the number of Afrikaners in the age group 15 to 34 years that is declining: in 2009 their number was 1 245 000, compared to 1 193 000 in 2014 (a decline of 52 000). For 2009 to 2014, the decline in the number of Afrikaners in the age group 15 to 24 years was 5.2% and for the age group 25 to 34 it was 3%.75,80,87,95,96,111,115

The White segment of the population, of which the Afrikaners formed approximately 58% in 2011, declined with 4.2% between 2009 and 2014, while the Black population increased with 7.3%. The statistics for 2011 to 2016 confirmed the declining trend in the White segment numbers: the age group 0 to 4 years declined from 268 267 to 253 035; the age group 20 to 24 declined from 313 616 to 303 257; the age group 25 to 29 declined from 336 355 to 287 792; the age group 30 to 34 declined from 318 329 to 279 475; and the age group 35 to 39 declined from 342 316 to 278 789. The White segment’s decline in total for the period 2011 to 2016 was from 4 586 838 to 4 516 691 (a decline of 70 147 or -1.5% in five years). 75,80,87,95,96,111,115

What is shocking about the 2017 findings of Statistics South Africa (SSA) is the dramatic aging of the White population over the past 20 years. This is the result of the emigration of younger people, the decline in White births and the fact that people are living longer. Where the ratio of people 16 years and older to children younger than 16 years is 20 above 16 years per 100 children for Blacks, it has become 130 above 16 years per 100 children for Whites. If this trend continues, only a small pocket of Whites will be left in South Africa in years to come. Brand-Jonker 117 estimates the total South African White population at only 3% (compared to the present 8%) in 60 years. Cronje is even more pessimistic and he thinks that the White population can decline to between 1% and 3% in less than 40 years. This negative population profile of Whites is fully applicable to the Afrikaners.109,117,118

The Afrikaner doctrine of the NP-AB-DRC leadership that they have a “chosen role as a nation in Africa by God” and as “the bearers of the European culture in South Africa,” made them blind to the dramatic changes in their status in Africa, “with or without God’s will”. This hard reality has now arrived in 2017.37,119,120

Afrikaners have never taken a hard look at themselves in the mirror. They have a shocking lack of insight into the country’s present and future political and racial environment. They therefore pay no individual attention to their dwindling numbers and diminishing political and military power base, which could be devastating in long run for their existence. This lack of basic insight to read population warnings is illustrated well by Ginsberg121, p. 21 when he writes: “Back in 1989 there was one black child born every 28 seconds, and one white child born every 12 minutes”. Nearly 30 years ago Afrikaners knew what was awaiting them, but they failed to act constructively.

It is clear that it is not only the Afrikaner numbers that are declining, but the broader White segment as well. This implies a decline in political empowerment, not only for the Afrikaners, but for all Whites.75,80,87,95,96,111,115

3.2.6 Afrikaner culture

The Afrikaners’ unique ethno-cultural identity has always been intricately linked to the name “Afrikaner” and their numbers as a tribe. Of the main components of the Afrikaner culture are the Afrikaans language, religion, cultural heritage, education, family life, employment, sports and recreation, and folklore. This unique Afrikaner culture was nurtured and maintained in isolation by means of a system of separate development in which the non-White cultures, especially that of the Blacks, were seen as inferior to that of the Afrikaner. It was even sometimes regarded as non-Christian.37-39,119

This early unique Afrikaner culture and the strict isolation from the rest of South African cultures in an effort to conserve it, circled out to all spheres of South African social life. This resulted in separate sport and recreation activities, residential areas and health, school and training facilities; as well as legal prohibitions on miscegenation. The foundation was Christian nationalism. The basic intention was not only to preserve the Afrikaner identity, but to maintain the fundamentals of Afrikaner culture and to limit it to the Afrikaner-milieu alone. In terms of the doctrine of Afrikaner nationalism, the principle was to promote and to reserve Afrikaner culture at all cost; and to cleanse it from foreign, especially Black cultural influences. Foundational to this doctrine was the belief that the Afrikaner and White civilisations would disappear if it became contaminated by the Black culture. This disappearance of the White and Afrikaner civilisation would automatically result in the disappearance of the Afrikaner as a person.26,37,39,119

Religion was always a strong role player in the Afrikaners’ behaviour and their political thinking and indoctrination, which took the form of a Christian nationalism. Socialism and communism were feared, not because of their implications for the economy, but due to the threat to the Afrikaners’ religion and to their privileges and favoured lifestyles. The Afrikaners’ religious beliefs and traditions were founded on the Protestant practices of the Reformed Church of Holland in the 17th century and were later influenced by English-speaking ministers of the UK. Of all these early role players, it seems that the French Huguenots’ racial-religious influence on the political mindsets of the proto-Afrikaner was immense and has been under-estimated in evaluations of the Afrikaners’ later racism. These French settlers, arriving at the Cape in 1688 at a time when the White population lacked a strong unified political mindset, strongly underwrote the Swiss church reformer John Calvin’s ideas that the church should influence the government and that races should remain pure and separate. This new racial-religious doctrine was quickly incorporated into to Cape’s religious system, which was up until that time influenced by the Goske agreement of 1671. French Calvinism quickly became part of the proto-Afrikaner and the doctrine of the Cape Reformed Church, leading to a unique kind of Calvinistic Protestantism among the proto-Afrikaners and later Afrikaners. By 1985, as many as 92% of Afrikaners were still members of the various Afrikaner Reformed Churches, showing the lasting influence of Calvinist Protestantism on Afrikaners after 300 years.37,38,95,96

The Cape French Huguenots, known for their extreme religious-political views on race, can therefore be regarded as one of the main causes of the later racial discrimination in South Africa. In fact, the Huguenots’ racial attitude was one of the reasons for their persecution and expulsion from France that brought them to the Cape.95,96

The above early blueprint of religious-racial thinking in time led to a specific social-cultural lifestyle among the proto-Afrikaners of the Cape Settlement, Cape Colony and the Boer Republics and later especially the Afrikaners of the Union and the Republic of South Africa. Central to this particular lifestyle and inclination were European, Western and Christian values, standards and life views; community cohesion; a familiar and recognisable environment; a specific way of life; a sense of origin and identity; the psychological satisfaction of an in-group community life; standards of public order, behaviour and respectability; traditions and prescriptions; financial well-being and political-empowerment; and so-called “white culture,” mythical or not. This blueprint became a driver and guideline for their daily doings, decision making, beliefs, customs, traditions and education, even outside the racial and class context. It became so recognisable that literature refers to it as the “unique culture” of the Afrikaners.7,37,38,119

Although this “European Afrikaner culture” of the Afrikaner lacked reference to any European society, Afrikaners believed that they are the bearers of a superior, “African-free” European system that required the imposition of pervasive controls and management of Blacks.37,119

This cultural-religion-political inclination affected all of the Afrikaner’s life to such an extent that major Christian religious holidays like Christmas, Good Friday, Ascension Day were reserved next to political holidays like Founder’s Day, Republic Day, Kruger Day, Day of the Vow. These days became “holy days” that all Afrikaners strictly adhered to and respected. Belonging to one of the Afrikaner Reformed churches was a priority and essential for social mobility. Sunday became a day of rest, reserved for attending church services, with shops, movie theatres and the practice of organised sport being forbidden. This Calvinist Protestantism was intertwined with certain church activities like baptism, catechism and Bible instruction, and specific marriage and burial traditions and customs that reminds one of 17th century Protestant practices.95,96

Afrikaners children were educated within a framework of a strict and punitive Protestant religio-political worldview. Children were required to think, develop and behave within the confines of this conservative mindset. Even a strict clothing protocol was prescribed at Afrikaner schools and churches. In line with their Calvinist Protestantism, children were required to receive a good school training from the age of six to 18 years, and where possible, to attend tertiary institutions.95,96

The Afrikaners’ Calvinist Protestantism rites of passage were inculcated into their folklore, public and personal relationships, family life, dress, traditions, lifestyle rules and prescriptions, sport and recreational activities and employment traditions and styles. Boer music (“Boeremusiek”), folk dance (“Volkspele”), social dancing (“sokkie”) and “Boeresport” (a range of games like tug of war, three-legged races, jukskei and other games) became traditions unique to the Afrikaner.37,95,96

There have been changes to the Afrikaner’s culture, some recent and swift after 1994, while others have been happening gradually over many years. First, there has been a gradual religious mindshift with regard to Black people in the Afrikaner, but it ultimately resulted in immense changes to and the Afrikaner culture, basically obliterating it. This left many deviating from political and moral prescriptions, making them more pragmatic and materialistic. Although the DRC kept Afrikaners from church integration, the Calvinist Protestantism of the proto-Afrikaner was also taught to the Cape slaves and the Cape Coloureds. The various missionary institutes also transferred Christianity to the Blacks. The effect of the early Christianisation efforts on the lifestyles of non-Whites is well illustrated in research. Christianity in time spread to the rest of the South African population, to such an extent that 87.9% of the Blacks and 90% of the total South African population adhere to Christianity today. This outcome was one of the reasons why the doctrine of separate development from the early 1700s onwards (institutionalised as Apartheid in the 20th century) with its belief that the Blacks were non-Christians or heathens in terms of Grand Apartheid, gradually became obsolete. The religious and cultural uniformity among Afrikaners weakened immensely after the fall of Apartheid. The solidarity and group unity on race and the “Black question”, faded. The improvement of religious ties and increased socialisation between Whites and Blacks bettered personal and work relations between some sectors of the Afrikaners and Blacks. Renewed post-1994 socialisation between Whites and Blacks further weakened the stereotypes held among Afrikaners that Blacks are primitive and that there are true racial differences that make Blacks culturally and psychologically inferior as humans and that keeps them from developing according to the standards of Western civilisation.78,119,122-125

The impact of the new South Africa also influenced the religious and cultural context of the present-day Afrikaner, changing it dramatically since 1994. Afrikaners have moved far away from the Huguenot doctrine of their grandfathers and their fathers. This is reflected in a decline in their adherence to Christianity, where as much as 82% Afrikaners belonged to the Dutch Reformed Churches in 1982, this membership has declined to only 1 450 861 out of a 2 576 184 possible Afrikaner members by 2001, representing 56%. In 2013 it was also reported that just more than 30% of Afrikaners still read the Bible at home, while as much as 62% Afrikaners said in 2015 that they no longer attend church on a weekly base.95,96

This “unofficial” split between the “old” and “present-day” doctrines, habits, customs and traditions of the DRC churches is clearly reflected by their members’ public rejection of firmly established church rituals, practices and even management. The position of women as ministers, gays in church life, etc. and various other controversial issues became burning issues, leading to direct confrontation between members and church leaders. Many members have come to reject the pre-1994 doctrines of the NP and AB. The Afrikaners, especially the younger generation, do not hesitate to take the church to court if they feel that the church has failed them and their new liberal religious perspectives. Subjects like atheism, communist Christianity and homosexuality are now openly discussed and even practiced or underwritten by Afrikaners without the pre-1994 fear of being completely rejected by the Afrikaner community. Religious radicalism and blind trust in the right-wing church culture has drastically declined. This new religious thinking among Afrikaners resulted in a large egression from the traditional Afrikaner churches to charismatic churches. These changes have resulted in the DRC threatening to split into two and it is no longer the church of choice among all Afrikaners.52-54,125-139

The only thing Afrikaner churches can still offer their often-conservative members is a White Christianity that is still guarded from a Brown and Black Christianity. Since 2000, many of the Afrikaners, especially the younger generation, have turned away from extreme religious practices and fundamentalism, lessening the dominance of the Calvinist component over their culture, social and political life.101,129,139

The diminishing role of the DRC in public life is indicative of a slow death in progress, as happened with the NP and AB. As with the NP during its dying years, the DRC fails to offer moral leadership to its members on their future in the new South Africa and to modernise its religious system.129,140

Of course the end of Apartheid contributed to the transformation in the Afrikaner’s religious mindset. This change has been supported by changes to the education system since 1994. This includes the exclusion of religious beliefs from schools, phasing out exclusively White public schools and higher education institutions with Afrikaans as medium of instruction. The newly established academic, work-related and social relationships between the younger Whites and Blacks, both generations born outside of the Apartheid contamination of hate and conflict, has hastened this change.58,141,142

Clearly, the sentiment around the traditional Afrikaner church, its powers and influences, has started to crumble fast, freeing the Afrikaner more and more from religious and cultural isolation, making them independent from a formal church association. This outcome, driven by new democratic and free thinking, has also started to shape the Afrikaner’s unique culture. Afrikaners’ personal and social views on education, childrearing, marriage and racism, including Afrikaner nationalism, have undergone a metamorphosis to something that is quite the opposite of the views that characterised the culture of twenty to thirty years ago. The maintenance of old traditions, views, opinions and values have weakened and seems to be in a process of diminishing. Political and social changes and reforms are gruelling processes, sparing not even that which has been regarded as sacred for many centuries. The Afrikaners culture bears evidence of this gruelling process of the last 20 years, steering more and more into an unblemished South African culture.7,37,119

3.2.7 Afrikaners’ White blood purity

A direct and primary co-determinant that activated and drove the Afrikaner to racial domination and discrimination was his fear that open racial societies would promote miscegenation, leading to a contamination of their Caucasian blood by non-White blood. Sexual contact between different races therefore had to be avoided, during Apartheid by means of legal prohibitions. It is the same fear that led the Nazis to the “Jewry question” and the Holocaust as an end result.1,26,39

Added to this, there was the widely accepted and propagated view that the “Afrikaner” is a unique and “pure” White, European and Caucasian race that had its biological and cultural origins in 1652 at the Cape Settlement. This was far from the truth and an incorrect idea. The proof in literature of a more than 6% non-White component in the bloodline of the earlier White Cape settlers in the immediate period after 1652 through miscegenation, was tactfully avoided by researchers and the nationalist Afrikaner himself from 1902 onwards. This denial became even stronger from the 1940s onwards with the development of Afrikaner nationalism.3,7,39

The estimated 6% blood from other races in the Afrikaner’s bloodline is, in fact, far too low. Some research puts it at 7.2%, while other research reflects a 10.7% Indian influence on the Afrikaners’ matrilineal gene pool from Malaysian and other slave women (up to the early 1800s, 80% of the slaves came from India. It was only from 1730 onwards that the import of slaves from Madagascar was intensified).73,143

There is also an erroneous view that this early intermingling was limited to few and certain White families, and that these 6% to 10.7% mixed Afrikaner descendants were pushed from White society to form the new Coloured population at the Cape. This vertical biological development of a closed and outcast group of mixed people, mostly excluded from the White nucleus that formed modern Afrikaners, is surely true as evidenced by the South African Coloureds and other mixed people of today. The politician and former premier of the Cape Province, Peter Marais, describes this “schizophrenic” split between people of the same bloodline well49, p. 7: “Ons (wit en bruin mense) is een volk. Een pa, maar twee ma’s”. The superficiality of this split is confirmed by historical evidence of an immense horizontal biological impact of “Coloured blood” on Afrikaners’ genes, contradicting the 6% to 10.7% of mixed Afrikaner descendants and of an exclusive separate vertical development of the Coloureds as a separate ethnic group.

The sited numbers (6% to 10.7%) selectively masked the true historical fact of a free social and sexual horizontal biological association between the races in the Cape, especially immediately after the introduction of the free burghers in 1657 up to 1671. The fact is, many of the children born to European fathers between 1650 and the late 1600s had slave mothers. Indeed, three out of four children born to slave mothers during 1650 to 1670 had White fathers (meaning that the direct, first line infusion of “non-White blood” into the White parent stock can even as high as 75%). The fact is that between 1657 1671, these early male “Afrikaner” ancestors took Black, Hottentot and Malay women. They were accepted into the White community, either as concubines or wives. They, together with some White women, became the parent stock of the Whites and the Afrikaners. These non-White women’s children, especially the females, were mostly assimilated into society directly and horizontally to make up for the shortage of women, without any discrimination or stigmatisation.7,38,73

This multiracial component that was incorporated into the White bloodline, a fact that is mostly hushed, had a profound effect on the gene pool of the later Afrikaners, seeing that no remarkable effort was made immediately after 1691 to bring more White colonist families or White women. Between 1657 and 1806, the total number of White women who arrived was 454 compared to 1 590 White male colonists. This comes to one female for every four males. In 1688 the White population consisted of 573 persons: 254 men, 88 women and 231 children, in other words one woman for every three men. The above White population (including the contingent of women from other races incorporated into the White family tree) of the late 1600s became the matrilineal Afrikaner parent stock and gene pool. These women who came to the early Cape married early and had large families. There was a high incidence of inter-family marriages as result of the shortage of females. These earlier proto-Afrikaner-families, founded on various racial and ethnic bloodlines, formed the trunk (nucleus) of the Afrikaner family tree that branched out to today’s Afrikaners.39

The 6% to 10.7% influence of other races on the earlier White colonists spread out horizontally since 1652. Within two generations, these genes formed part of all or most of the matrilineal White families at the Cape. This 6% to 10.7% is therefore misleading. The Afrikaner bloodline is far more inclusive of other races, and this intermingling affected most of the Whites at the Cape by 1754, when the census of Cape governor Ryk Tulbagh showed that White free burghers totalled only about 6 000. They were already outnumbered by more than 6 000 slaves (this was already apparent by 1710). Statistically speaking, the infusion of “blood” from other races to the early matrilineal White society at the Cape could results in a 100% “contamination” of the Afrikaner blood of “old” Afrikaner families by bloodlines from other races. This occurred due to repeated intermarriages between proto-Afrikaner families between 1652 and 1806.. This paints a picture that is totally different from the 6% to 10.7% reflected in literature.38,39,73,143

Literature sites the early horizontal European blood infusion to the matrilineal Afrikaner parent stock as 66.67% Dutch, 16.67% French, 14.29% German and 2.37% Scandinavian, Belgian, Scottish and Irish “bloodlines” at the Cape in the late 1600s and the early 1700s. These estimations change a little bit when the period is taken between 1657 and 1867. The numbers change as follows: 35.5% Dutch, 13.9% French, 34.4% German, 2.6% British, 2.8% Other European, 3.6% Unknown and 7.2% non-European. These numbers bluntly and blindly ignore the fact that the French impact of between 13.9% and 16.67% from 1688 constitutes another non-White horizontal blood contamination of the gene pool of the matrilineal Afrikaner parent stock at the Cape. This is due to the earlier Afro-Arab blood contamination of Europeans like the French, Portuguese and Spanish as a result of the early Moorish occupation of Europe and the miscegenation between the Europeans and the Afro-Arabs for many years. This French blood contamination was further transferred to the English through widespread intermarriages between the English and the French after the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and the French reign of England until 1366, to such an extent that 25% of the English forefathers are French. This multiracial bloodline was transferred to the proto-Afrikaners from the 1800s through intermarriages with the British at the Cape. The same is true of the blood contamination of proto-Afrikaners through their intermarriages with Portuguese and Spaniards at the Cape.72,73,91,144,145

The slow growth of the Cape White population since 1754 and the shortage of European newcomers, especially women, to contribute to pureness of their European bloodline, is confirmed by the fact that in 1806 (52 years after the Tulbagh census) the Cape’s White population was still very small, only 26 720. This reflected an average annual growth of only 502 White people. This confirms the branching out (downwards) of the multiracial genetic component through the matrilineal White parent stock due to constant and unavoidable inter-family marriages.95,96,143

This horizontal inter-family bloodline among Afrikaners that goes hand-in-hand with a multiracial component is further confirmed by various family illnesses prevalent in Coloured and Afrikaner families over many years and generations. Huntington’s disease is such an example. The South African mixed-race population contracted this illness from their Dutch and British ancestry, which they share with the Afrikaners. These symptomatic illnesses were undoubtedly further aggravated by the later horizontal intermarriages within Afrikaner families, especially in the late 1800s and early 1900s.73,146,147

By the late 1800’s there were more or less 46 000 Whites at the Cape. They were so interconnected through intermarriage that they were a great interrelated family rather than a new polyglot community. In the later stages of the intermarriage effect, non-White mothers formed a nucleus. Since there was a shortage of women up to the early 1800s, this led to further inter-family marriages between first and second nephews and nieces. In this way, a multiracial bloodline spread horizontally too many, if not most, of the branches of the Afrikaner family tree. This phenomenon was indeed much higher than the conservative and traditionally accepted 6% to 10.7% reflected in the general genealogical literature on the Afrikaner. It is not a case that only 6% to 10.7% of the Afrikaners are from other races; a case can rather be made that more than 6% to 10.7% of the initial gene pool of the Afrikaner is multiracial. This means that far more that 6% to 10.7% of today’s Afrikaners are are not purely White.72,73,144

The shortage of women at the Cape resulted in the mixed or Coloured females from the first miscegenation becoming concubines and wives to male newcomers. It was only by the middle 1800s that the gender ratio of 1:4 females to males improved. This highlights the comprehensive pathway of “blood contamination” that follows when the trunk of a family tree is horizontally penetrated by various bloodlines at an early stage and spreads out downwards over centuries to affect many, if not all, of the descendants. The later “whiteness” of these “contaminated” Whites did not come from the “blood purity” of the Whites at the Cape or their later abstinence from miscegenation with other races. It was simply the direct result of the “whitening” of their mixed race offspring with further miscegenation with Whites until they became indistinguishable from the White settlers themselves. However, genetically they are more or less the same as their mixed nephews and nieces.73,146

The argument that an initially “contaminated” White bloodline has been purified through generations of only procreating within the White gene pool, especially by means of the unofficial and official Apartheid policies that excluded other races from the Afrikaner’s society and family life to prevent mixing, carries little weight. Though racial segregation was practiced from the 1850s to the 1990s, this period of abstinence from racial miscegenation was too short to “purify” a large contingent of Afrikaners of mixed-race blood from their non-White ancestors, dating especially from 1652 to 1670 and immediate thereafter. Indeed, their skins became more white but their gene pool is not white to the same extent. No wonder that this inclusion of “black blood” now inspire proponents of the “Afrikaners-are-Africans”-view to declare the Afrikaner as “Black”.70-72,144,146

The present-day Afrikaner can pride himself in being “purely White” in terms of various definitions used worldwide. However, the term “White person” has since 1924 been defined in the State of Virginia, USA as “such a person has no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian or one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian and no other non-Caucasia blood.” If this definition is used, many Afrikaners would not have passed the pure White test. Using the Nazi annulment definition where a single Jew in the family tree meant that a person was a Jew, the outcome would have been catastrophic. The chances of an Afrikaner to survive a Holocaust would have been zero. In South Africa, the Afrikaner has come to understand the dilemma of his mixed bloodline very well. In some cases, there is a sudden manifestation of a Coloured or Black child from White parents. The “White classification” of 1948 was amended in 1966 so that the child of two White parents were classified as “White”, notwithstanding the contrary physical appearances to be Black or mixed of their offspring.1,148,149

The South African human rights activist, Rhoda Kadalie, herself a descendant from White, Malaysian and Coloured fore-fathers, previously married to a White South African and the mother of children born out of this so called “mixed” marriage, rejected the Afrikaner’s insistence on his White blood purity when she said with pride about her family150, p.11: “Ons is ‘n regte basterfamilie”. This can surely also be said by many Afrikaners with the same pride as Kadalie, if they have courage enough and are honest with themselves about their heritage.

It is important to note that the South African Blacks also carry the genes of various races through their miscegenation with other races in South Africa. South African Black tribes are physically the end product of a racial mingling of the Negros of Africa and the Hamite people. South African Blacks can today be classified into four clear and separate Black groups in terms of language and culture. This is notwithstanding the ANC and the Marxist intentions and efforts to declare all South Africans “grey people” and the Blacks a uniform Black group for the sake of political rights. The four groups are the Nguni group, the Sotho-Tswana group, the Venda group and the Shangana-Tsonga group. These four main Black groups can further be divided into ten Black ethnic groups, each with their own culture, life values, language, and customs and characteristics that are conserved. They also inbred with Whites, Coloureds, Asians as well as other smaller groups like the Khoi-Khoi and Hottentot. This multi-racial inbreeding between Afrikaners, Coloureds and Blacks is still active and ongoing today as reflected by many mixed marriages and the birth of “mixed-race” children.42,50,113,142,150,151

One example of this racial intermingling is the marriage of the Democratic Alliance (DA) leader, Mmusi Maimane, to a White woman.15 This continuation of racial miscegenation that started in 1652 and the resulting new generation of intermixed Blacks and Whites is excellently described by Tambo Dali, a prominent Black South African married to a White South African, when he says142, p. 23: “In my family there are three colours: black, white and my four golden brown children.”

History has the inclination to repeat itself, also regarding natural racial mingling and miscegenation. South Africa is an excellent example where even the Immorality Act of the Apartheid regime could not stop it. Racial intermingling between Blacks and Whites is going to increase in the future, not decrease.

Ultimately, the colour of a person’s skin can contribute very little to the physical classification of a person into a specific South African race group. To call South African Blacks “pure Blacks” is also an error, just as the Afrikaners are not “pure Whites”: South Africans are to a great extent ethnically and racially much more “Creole” than they themselves know or want to know.42,78,113-115

4. Discussion

The view of the Afrikaner as a nation was clearly inapplicable and erroneous. The same can be said about the political and emotionally laden classifications of people as part of the “White nation”, the “Zulu nation”, or the “Xhosa nation”. Today, “nation” refers to the South African nation, including all the races, tribes and peoples inside the borders of the country under one legal definition and classification. The Afrikaners can at most be seen as a South African tribe, more specifically a group among which specific racial features and various cultural similarities are identifiable, based on a predominately mixed European origin.

Arguing that Afrikaans is an old language is wrong. Although it does have roots in the remote past, it is not yet a century old in 2017 as an official language. In addition, to argue that it was exclusively developed by the Afrikaner or that it is a sole Afrikaner possession is also wrong. Afrikaans developed into an independent language from European Dutch as its initial basis. This process was driven by South Africa’s “old” populations, starting in 1652. It was definitely not a language spoken exclusively by the proto-Afrikaners away from the other racial and ethnic groups. To the contrary, it was a mutual language, unsophisticated for a long time, spoken, written and used by the country’s various racial and ethnic groups in their communication with each other. Indeed, one of the first works in written Afrikaans was “Bayaan-ud-djyn”, an Islamic tract written in Arabic script by Abu Bakr in 1845.74,76,83,152-154

There are still various Afrikaans dialects that could be regarded as “Kombuis” Afrikaans. Examples include the varieties spoken in certain parts of the country by the various Afrikaans subgroups, like “Afri-kaaps” of the Cape Flats, “Cape Afrikaans” of Western Cape and the “Orange River Afrikaans” in the Northern-Cape. These dialects can with good reason be seen as public protests against the gold standard of Afrikaans that some academic purists with Afrikaner-nationalist sentiments see as the correct and only Afrikaans, belonging exclusively to the nationalist Afrikaners.73,89,107

This means the Afrikaans language is still in a process of development and it will certainly change considerably as time goes on, especially with the input of the Afrikaanses. The language will not only survive, like the Icelandic and Welsh languages did, it will grow through its use in primary communications between the Afrikaanses as their numbers grow.52-54,67,76,77,152,155-158

It is not wrong to say that Afrikaans also belongs to the “Afrikaanses”, a group that is much more comprehensive in numbers than the Afrikaner grouping, but free from the exclusive contaminated race and ethnicity connection of the Afrikaners. The presence of the Afrikaanses in the South African greater society indeed nullifies the nationalist Afrikaner argument that the Afrikaners are the sole creators or keepers and guardians of the Afrikaans language: there are many more role players. The future of Afrikaans, it seems, is much safer in the hands of the politically uncontaminated “Afrikaanses” than in those of the Afrikaner.7

The name “Afrikaner” in certain circles refers to an exclusive Afrikaner identity that entails political rights and that is regarded as centuries old and endangered by other races and even outsiders from his own White racial group if he allows miscegenation. This identity served as a justification for his discriminatory behaviour against persons from other races. The though construct surrounding this identity was clearly erroneous.

The research shows that the Afrikaners are indeed a very small group in the greater South African population. They are decreasing in number every year, and seeing the controversy around the name “Afrikaner” as an established identity that conserves Afrikaner unity and exclusiveness, the Afrikaner is already en route to dissolution of the group’s coherence as a natural course of events. If the declining numbers (5.2% to 10%) of the Afrikaners from 1960 to 2011 (50 years) are taken as a guideline for future predictions, and the emigration numbers of 1994 to 2017 continue, the Afrikaner as a group would be dissolved by 2117.75,80,87

The belief that the present-day Afrikaner’s Christian religion is unique is also an untruth. The same can be said about the Afrikaner’s culture of today: it has very little in common with the Afrikaner culture of his father and his grandfather. Present Afrikaner culture is much more culturally integrated with the other ethnic groups, like the Coloureds and to some extent even the Blacks. These various cultural changes, some slight while others are significant, are notable in Afrikaner family life, work ethic, the customs and traditions they underwrite and practice, as well as his educational and social preferences. The Afrikaner in general has become an individual, not very different from any other South African.

The idea that the Afrikaner is “lily” white is inaccurate. The strict prohibition of miscegenation between Afrikaners and Blacks because of the Afrikaner’s White blood purity was therefore pointless. The process of intermingling was activated in 1652 and is indeed on-going. The Afrikaner’s discrimination on the basis of “pure blood” reflects a lack of knowledge about his own racial origin. The Afrikaner seems to lack insight and wise reasoning in this regard.

When considering the above information, it is clear that Apartheid was in essence designed by the NP, the AB and the DRC, especially during the period under Verwoerd, in an attempt to secure a correspondence between nation status and territory for Afrikaners. The only principle was refusal to share political power in South Africa. This was done by imposing a political order with creative procrastination and manipulation, much more incisive than just pure racial segregation. It was a period of grand Apartheid with brutal and numerous well thought through legislative, economic, political and administrative policies. It ignored and disregarded the interests and aspirations of the subjugated citizens of South Africa in a blind belief that the Afrikaners, at that stage the most developed of all the South African groups, deserved the lion’s share of all the country’s benefits and rights and that this situation will be permanent. Although there were a number of policy reforms and adaptations by the NP since the late 1970s to uplift Blacks, was it exclusively aimed at keeping the Afrikaner regime in power and to reserve Afrikaner and White rights and benefits.7,37,159

There is no doubt that the masterminds behind Apartheid during the peak of Apartheid were the members of the Afrikaner Broederbond. It consisted of a nucleus of approximately 20 000 nationalist Afrikaners, referred to as the Super Afrikaners. Their powerful cultural, economical, political and military tentacles reached all nationalist Afrikaners, especially the Afrikaners belonging to the NP and the DRC. It form an immense circle and powerful group of approximately three million members, what Giliomee called the NP-Broederbonder-Afrikaners.41, p. 11 Many Afrikaners were not nationalist Afrikaners and experienced discrimination and domination to some extent, like the Blacks. However, they still benefited directly and indirectly from Apartheid and, notwithstanding their distaste for Apartheid, they mostly remained silent on Apartheid’s wrong-doings. Collectively, these side-lined Afrikaners cannot escape responsibility for Apartheid, whatever their arguments and excuses are. They are, with the Super-Afrikaners and nationalist Afrikaners, culprits. Although it is argued that Afrikaners born after 1994 are been freed from this burden they too cannot plead not guilty. They are still benefitting from what their forefathers gained over many years during Apartheid. This outcome makes all of these individuals part of the entity “Afrikaners” to which this article refers.7,36,37,41

5. Conclusion

The aim of this first article in the series of seven was to inform the Afrikaner on who he is and to reflect on the Afrikaner and the Afrikaner’s past roles as citizens of South Africa. The article begs of Afrikaners in-depth introspection. Afrikaners should answer the question whether they had already reached self-actualisation and an optimal personal happiness in the new South Africa. Has the Afrikaner left his worries and fears behind to commit to a good life here, or is he considering other options for happiness in the future.

It is an open question whether the proto-Afrikaner of 1910 on the founding of the Union, would have supported racism, especially the Afrikaner nationalism of the NP-AB-DRC-alliance (Grand Apartheid) from 1948 onwards, had they been thoroughly educated on who they are and where they truly come from. Would the mess the Afrikaners find themselves in today have been their real choice? If Afrikaners knew the facts, would they not perhaps have acted differently? Instead of selecting to obstruct Black voting from 1910 to1948, would they not have had selected not to obstruct one-man-one-vote. Would they not have parted with the “Boer” and “Cape Dutch” identities in 1910 to choose the ANC as his preferred party by the 1960s? Would they not perhaps have become Afrikaanse and Black South Africans because they are Black?3,11,26,92,96,

Was the Afrikaner’s immense psychological fear in 1994 to be rejected as a “traitor”, “joiner” and “hendsopper” (“hand-upper) if he became an ANC supporter or made another radical political change-over stronger than the fear that their culture will dissolve within a century? Are these two fears, now in combination, paralysing today the Afrikaners so that they cannot make sound decisions about their present and future role in the RSA?3,11,26,92,96

Was the cause of Apartheid perhaps the Afrikaner’s dark disposition and inclination to racial and ethnic discrimination? If so, it has resulted in many negative political and life consequences that the Afrikaner must face as they face the personal confusion in the new South Africa.

Two crucial questions emerge from the above:

▼Was the Afrikaner’s racial and ethnic discrimination learned from and embedded as part of their mindset by the bad examples of racist governance and other social, religious, cultural and political institutions and groups into which they were born and grew up? or

▼Do Afrikaners regard their racial behaviours as justified acts of revenge for personal, political, social and economic injustices perpetrated against them by other races and ethnic groups?

Evaluating your own history and wrongdoings of the past is not easy. “We find ourselves living in an indignant world, one intolerant of complexity when viewing our history and eager for simple characterisations of good and bad”, writes the writer Kalim Rajab160, p. 18. He concludes160, p. 18: “…we ultimately need room for greater magnanimity and to allow greater space for graciousness in our understanding of the past”. These words are very much applicable to the Afrikaners when they have to look at themselves: they are caught up in indoctrination that taught that they are a superior race that does only the ethically correct and good, versus the inferior Black subordinates whose doings were infected with unethical and bad behaviour and an inferior disposition. The nationalist Afrikaner regime’s doctrine of Afrikaner supremacy was supported by the idea of a “completeness and perfection” as part of a superior mindset and lifestyle. This started in in 1652 at the Cape of Good Hope. It was internalised by many ordinary Afrikaners: Afrikaners are only good versus Blacks are always bad. Most Afrikaners are too frightened to acknowledge the bad in their past, avoiding consciously and unconsciously their incompleteness, imperfection and failures, which so greatly characterise all humans. This study informed the Afrikaners of their true past, who they are: they are just ordinary humans, indigenous people of the same bloodline as their previous subordinates, characterised by the same incompleteness, imperfections and failures.

The advice of Palkhivala159 is valuable for Afrikaners in their effort to unshackle and cleanse themselves from the dark secrets of their past and to move successfully into the new South Africa with its manifold indigenous realities. He writes159, p. 77: “Every country must learn to live with its past history and to cherish it instead of trying to rewrite it. Chaos would be the only result of trying to undertake ‘correction of history’, or to undo the past, or to seek to remedy past wrongs”. The Afrikaners tried all these wrong venues in the past and failed. They have hopefully at last learned from the past.

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